Muladi: RI should revoke defense cooperation with Singapore

Jakarta, NU Online
Muladi, governor of the National Resilience Institute (Lemhanas), said Indonesia should have the courage to revoke its defense cooperation agreement (DCA) with Singapore if the two sides cannot agree on the accord`s implementing arrangements.

The agreement should be revoked if Singapore is reluctant to continue discussing the cooperation agreement signed last April, Muladi said here on Thursday.<>

"If Singapore doesn`t want to discuss and agree on the implementing arrangements (IA), especially regarding the Bravo area, there is no other way except revoking it," he said.

Regarding the extradition treaty also with the island state and signed at the same time with the DCA, he said was important to Indonesia. But if Singapore continued rejecting Indonesia`s proposals on the DCA`s implementing arrangements, Indonesia should not hesitate to revoke the two agreements as they made under a single package.

"Even if the extradition treaty comes into force, it is no guarantee that Indonesian state assets hidden in the city state can be recovered," he was quoted by Antara news agency.

According to Muladi, the signing of the extradition treaty with Singapore meant that the island state had for a long time been sheltering corrupters by letting them deposit their ill-gotten wealth in Singapore banks.

Considering that the DCA`s implementing arrangements, especially on the Bravo area, had yet to be agreed on, the House of Representatives has yet to approve it.

Earlier, Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono said Singapore was intentionally hampering talks on the DCA with Indonesia in the hope of being able to block the implementation of the extradition treaty.

The city state had intentionally blocked the DCA by raising a fuss about the Bravo training area on which implementation arrangements had yet to be made.

Juwono said that if the extradition treaty was really implemented, Singapore would lose much of its earnings.

Singapore was a country which depended on "hot money". The city state was like Switzerland which managed hot money from Africa, Latin American, Hong Kong, China and Indonesia, Juwono said.

Data from the Marry Lynch financial research institute show that at least 18,000 Indonesians have business network worth over one million Singapore dollars in that country. (dar)